Jazz Hands For The Introvert

When one fancies another there begins a dance. It is called The Woo. In nature there is either an easier Woo, or no Woo is required. For us humans however, this can at times be dangerous business, fraught with peril and humiliation.

To best understand the Woo, we must learn some of it’s history and go over some mistakes to avoid.

The evolution of The Woo:

After Adam and Eve screwed things up for all of us, we had to work (hard) at seeing each other naked. During the Cave Dwelling period, one would simply walk across the cave and draw a picture on the wall, point to it, and grunt.

Then came post cave days. The complexities of the Woo grew, as did the danger. Now it was fathers with hatchets and guns. This usually also involved the trading of a sow, (In Texas this is still the case.) Still, if your woo was found wanting, it was a long walk back. Horses came, cars, telegraphs and telephones. All this made things a little easier, but with this ease came the pressure to raise the level of one’s Woo.

Then came Email which pretty much killed the art of the handwritten note, once a great source of The Woo. Email led to chatting, you didn’t see the person you were chatting with, but everyone who did it seemed to be gorgeous! Texting arrived. As did a whole new language. Thank goodness we didn’t need to use whole words any more. Sometimes you didn’t even have to use words. You simply rearranged punctuation marks and made little people.

There was, LOLing and OMGing and lots of Rolling On The Floor Laughing. Apparently many were laughing so hard their asses fell right off! I guess I don’t know many of these people. My ass is never falling off or rolling. It’s a shame really, as I have a very rollable ass, and it could use some falling off.

We are a long way from the cave days. Grunting is no longer considered attractive. Things just got downright complicated. Depending on the level of smitteness you held in your heart, the Woo can break quickly and often.

To avoid the pitfalls, one must know the pitfalls. So let’s review the three levels of broken Woo:

Level One: The Visitor and the Impostor

There are those that fall down the Dork Hole and only find themselves knee deep. Often this can be overcome with a shot of tequila and a held gaze. The right gaze can make the whole skitter disappear. If you are an experienced “knee deeper,” this may not fluster you.

Level Two: Deep In The Doo-Doo Of Woo

Best not overshoot here. Do not attempt cool. You’re not. If you were, you would have come by Level One honestly. If you attempt and fail, you will be road kill. It is best to adjust your sights. Aim for endearing or adorable. Take heart Level Two, there are women who lean towards the awkward fellow. Go to any Comic Con and you will see a tubby Superman walking along side a Xena. If you are so lucky as to be smitten with one of these, marry her!

But tread carefully Level Two. Do not become too sweet or too adorable. If you overplay, you will find yourself in the Friend Hole. There is no escape from this.

Level Three: No Woo For You

If you are at Level Three. Give it up. You are like a Chilean minor without the happy ending. Accept that you will be your own lover for a long time. Perhaps a very long time.

Level 3.5: Return Of The Woo

One day, hopefully, you’ll be back. You feel a breath force itself into your lungs, and you feel your heartbeat rise above a sleepy thump. It’s time to begin again. Perhaps you go for what you assume are easier targets. You start hanging around laundromats, looking for girls washing saggy panties, reading romance novels, self-help books, or anything by James Patterson. You learn to also keep an eye out for the hidden gems. Maybe a girl who’s eyes point in opposite directions. Then there is the mother load! The target of your smitten-ness has Tourette’s. Not every guy could deal with a woman who screams “Cock sucker!” at any given moment, but she could be your Juliet. There is even a reasonable chance she could be quite cute. Plus, there is the cost saving aspect, you can probably cancel your cable and not lack for entertainment.

This leads us into Level Four: True Woo

I didn’t mention Level Four before, because it is a rare bird indeed. Level Four is the prize. It’s where you find out your Woo is not broken after all. It is where she looks for you. You are not merely accepted, you are sought after. You are wanted. She looks into you, and past how you see yourself, she sees behind all those fears, dusts off the scars that started all this. She shows you that the scars are no longer there, that you have been holding onto a part of yourself that ceased to exist long ago. She saw something in you and waited until you saw it too. Even if every time you saw her, and tried to speak. you sounded like a 7th grader speaking remedial Dutch.

Then one day you open your mouth, and it’s you. You realize you never had the Woo you sought. Never needed it. The true you, was the Woo.

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**This is a true story, I have only told it to a handful. It seems an appropriate day to share it.

We all shared in September 11, 2001, This is about one I shared with family of four, at ground zero on 9/11/09.

As far as I know I did not lose anyone on that day. But it has had a hold on me that frankly I cannot explain or shake. I had been traveling through New England and planned on visiting a friend in New York on the way back to Austin. As I planned my way back I noticed the day I would arrive in NY was 9/11.

I parked my truck and rode the train into the city from Stamford CT.

I would arrive at Grand Central Station

I saw some policeman, approached them, nervous about asking the question “How do I get to the World Trade Center site?” They kindly told me and I was on my way. I got to my stop. It was raining, raining hard. I looked to my right and I saw a view I had seen on TV a thousand times. It was the fence surrounding the WTC site. I walked towards it. I reached the fence but couldn’t see in. I wondered if the memorial was over yet.

t was. When I looked to my left dozens of black clad people were walking towards me. I looked into every pair of eyes that I could as I passed through them. Some met my eyes, other strained downward. The ones I crossed eyes with each had their stories and you could instantly tell how far each had walked towards their personal healing. Many still had tears to shed. There were those with wide open eyes with nothing behind them. Their eyes looked like abandoned homes, ransacked by vandals. Then there were the kind eyes with a nod and reluctant smile,

I made my way into an office building, then up, I passed through a glass door and found myself on a bridge that went between buildings, and to my right I looked down and saw this enormous crater and a scaffolding going down the middle. I spent some moments there. Before leaving a took a picture with my iPhone. It’s the only picture I would take. I went down to the lobby, then outside. I wanted to see more of Ground Zero, but I wasn’t sure what was possible or how to gain access. I just felt driven to try.

I was standing on the curb when I saw a family of four walking down the street, towards me. They seem to walk with purpose and confidence of direction. I dropped in behind them. We crossed the street and walked along the orange fencing towards a group of police men. The older man went first, never slowing down. The police man nodded and left he eyes about chest level for just a second. We each walked though the fence .Upon entering the depth of my awareness grew, If it is possible for your soul to vibrate, then mine did. I realized I was on Ground Zero. My legs got wobbly as I walked across the giant wooden platform that went between what used to be the two towers. Now they were these perfectly square deep caverns. I was overwhelmed at what I was feeling and imagining. I looked around and with each minute there, I knew more and more that my ability to ever describe it, would be less and less.

I found conviction in my legs again and I was able to move forward. I saw that memorial pool that survivors would place photographs, and roses into, I had seen it on TV so often. The workers were there with wheelbarrows gently removing the items. I wanted to take one, but felt it was not mine to have. I then saw the family I followed in standing across the pool from me. They were speaking together, softly, heavily. Then I saw an orange lanyard with a large id badge on it. I looked to the other members, they too had the same badges. My eyes went up from their badges to their crying eyes, then back down to the pool and the workers.They were family members, I wasn’t supposed to be there. But still, for whatever reason I was allowed to be there. They had dark skin and I believe African accents. They were beautiful, and broken. We forget how many other countries lost loved ones that day. My eyes connected with who I had imagined to be the father. I put both hands over my heart and then lowered my head into a slight bow. How I do not know, but he returned a smile that I will see the rest of my life. I then left, my eyes full of tears that would not fall.

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Once a month it is my privilege to be one of the “babes” over at www.bookendbabes.com. We do book reviews, and other writerly, bookie (not gambling) stuff. Though on occasion, and I wont say who (Dani) likes to get on Skype, put on those long petticoat pants and lift her big frilly skirt and go “whoopsie!”

On my posting day, last Tuesday, I began this conversation about Writers Notebooks.

Notebooks became something I claimed for myself, and not just for homework, in high school. I would “sketch” or record what I saw, and just make stuff up based on the people, or situations that I witnessed. I stopped doing that somewhere along the road. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Starbucks. I would still go and write, but I wasn’t drawing on my environment. It’s a matter of character, not whether you had any, but whether you were one. I miss the junkies and the pimps of my early coffee shop days. I miss the cowboy’s talking to the junkies and the pimps. Shoulder to shoulder on mis-matched barstools, each with their feet resting on the steel rims, at the bottom of the stool. One in scuffed up Nocona boots, the other in blindingly polished Stacy Adams wing-tips. and the junkie, with whatever shoes he recently found. Sometimes they matched. Sometimes they didn’t, the matching days were proud days.

The place where all these characters came to life was a diner on the east side of San Antonio. If you spent a couple of hours there late at night and some guy didn’t get into an argument with his Huevos Rancheros then it was an off night. On occasion someone would brandish a firearm, but no body could afford bullets. It was usually just some guy who had trouble performing with a hooker earlier, and had to man up a bit. He would puff his chest out, someone would show him some respect and we all went back to our pancakes.

I don’t do that anymore. Of course I’m not that guy anymore either. If I saw a gun now, I’m getting under something! But my post for the Babes did get me thinking about the remembered days of sketches and song. I tend to put most of my notes in my iPhone now, even though I carry a Moleskine in my back pocket. So as Waylon Jennings put it “Maybe it’s time we got back to the basics…”. So I grabbed a couple of fistfuls of Composition Notebooks for .50 each (Tis the season you know.)

It didn’t take long for the stories show themselves. I approached an intersection where there was a woman holding a cardboard sign. She was dancing, and dancing well I must admit. I suspected that she probably once had, or perhaps still had a career in the dancing arts. Probably the exotic kind. She walked up the line of cars, to as many views as she could get before the light turned and the cars would roll on past her. She would stop at one from time to time. I couldn’t be sure whether she stopped because she saw merciful eyes, or the other kind of eyes that she has seen all too often, and usually gave her money as well.

The light turned green and as I slowly drove by, I looked at her and smiled, then read her sign. In big black ink it read “I was wrong.”

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When I first started this blog it was because as a writer of these Social Media times, I was supposed to have one. That’s similar to the path of how I came to writing to begin with. Originally I wanted to direct films. If I wanted to do that, I had to write them, or find investors, so writing it was. After chasing that dream for a long time, I stopped chasing. I realized I really didn’t want to catch it after all. Being a writer seemed to fit me better. My friends told me I should write, after all I already wrote screenplays, and I could quill a pretty snappy greeting card. So I should write. Right?

The same year I decided to no longer pursue directing, my Step-Mother died. Two years later my Father would follow. I moved back to San Antonio and into their house. Cleared it and sold it (this took a year.) I then drove from Austin to Maine and all parts New England and back–twice! On the second trip I spent 6 months out there. To quote Henry David Thoreau, one of my heroes, “I went into the woods to live deliberately.” With any luck I hoped to quiet my mind enough so I could hear The Universe, or even the guy at the drive-thru, anyone, tell me what was next for my life. I needed a burning bush, so I headed for trees. Lots of trees, and not much else, except for those little bastard black flies. At times I was so remote in the woods of Northern Maine that the only voices I heard seemed to be coming from the trees. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but I was pretty sure they were pissed about me using their brethren for firewood. I went to live a story, so that I could write a story. But I haven’t written that story. Not yet.

I chose the subtitle Jazz Hands For Introverts, because it seemed to show the humor and contradiction of me having a blog. Those that know me already get the irony. But it’s finally happened for me. I have finally come to the choice on my own. The choice to be a writer. To tell my stories, to tell your stories. To be the best I can be, to hone my craft and always remain in a state of learning.

There is a lot of work to do. Things to learn, that I haven’t before now. A very good friend made a comment a few weeks back that was hurtful to me, but also truthful. She meant absolutely no harm, in fact trying to help. I know that. I got knocked down for a bit though, and had to find my legs again. That too is part of saying yes to being a writer. But I learned moving past the fear doesn’t mean the fear disappears. It doesn’t work that way, you can’t just wait it out. It means you move PAST it, like someone on a busy street that is in your way. They are still there, you just go around them to get to where you are going.

During the Olympics I kept seeing a trailer for a film called The Odd Life of Timothy Green. in one scene during soccer practice, Timothy apparently makes a mistake, one of many it seems. In the scene, the coach is chewing him out. Timothy just stands there smiling. Perplexed, the coach asks “why are you smiling?” Timothy responds with an irrepressible glee “Because I can only get better!”

For some people, they just have to cook for a while. To marinate in their life, in their choices. Everyone has a beginning, even if some start in the middle.